


Never Too Late

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5755882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His shoulders hunch and the ventilator hisses and his plastic chair is an island and the McClane-Gennero's are on the other side of the ocean, huddled together – Holly with mascara that turned out to be not so water proof and Jack with his hand over his eyes and Lucy meeting the doctor straight on, her spine rigid and her face betraying nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Too Late

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's smallfandomfest for the prompt "supernatural creature of your choice"
> 
> * * *

In the two weeks that he's been practically living at the hospital, Matt has memorized the number of oversized ceiling tiles from the elevator to John's room (18), the number of floor tiles from the nurses station to the visitors lounge (152) and the number of fluorescent lights on all the corridors on 4B (70, if he counts the constantly flickering one outside Mr. Johanssen's room.) He has sat on the bench opposite the wall of ancient black and white photos from the hospital's beginnings in the forties, nursing cold coffee and staring blankly at static images of nurses in peaked caps clustered around a man in a wheelchair and candy-stripers showing off the vast array of _Screen Gem_ and _Life_ magazines they have to offer. He knows that there are eight vibrant propaganda posters on the ward, all with bright smiling patients surrounded by bright smiling doctors under catchphrases like "Healthcare That Truly Cares" and "Innovative Care, Compassionate Caregivers." 

Not a single one of the patients in those banal advertisements for the hospital looks like he's ever suffered a day in his life.

None of them look like John, grey and sunken, tubes in his chest and IV in his arm and hooked up to machines that keep his lungs pumping. None of them look like they chased the kidnapper of a little girl through miles of subway tunnels and took three bullets in the chest and one in the hip before tossing the fucking pedophile under a moving train, and _still_ got the little girl to safety before collapsing on a platform. None of them look like that.

Matt stares at his hands while the doctor talks. He hears the words he doesn't want to hear – "deterioration" and "setback" chief among them – and he's grateful that the family let him be here near the end, but his shoulders hunch and the ventilator hisses and his plastic chair is an island and the McClane-Gennero's are on the other side of the ocean, huddled together – Holly with mascara that turned out to be not so water proof and Jack with his hand over his eyes and Lucy meeting the doctor straight on, her spine rigid and her face betraying nothing. He wants nothing more than to leave, to go back to his shitty little apartment on the east side and pretend he never met John McClane. And he wants nothing more than to stay, to hold John's hand and watch his chest rise and fall and never stop.

"Mr. Farrell?"

Matt looks up from the study of his nails. The doctor has left, and Holly has drawn up a chair close to the bed with Jack at her back and Lucy scowling at the floor. He frowns at the nurse in the doorway – if there are decisions to be made they won't fall to him – but gets up when she nods and smiles softly and gestures toward the hall.

"I'm sorry to call you away," she says when he steps out and closes the door carefully behind him. "I know you're going through a lot right now."

Matt shakes his head. It's John that's going through it – even in the coma he sometimes winces with the pain – and Matt is just a helpless bystander. "Can I help you, Nurse—"

"Patterson," she supplies. Her smooth blonde hair doesn't bob when she nods, too bound up in a web of hairspray for that, and her brightly painted red lips curve into a smile. "Amelia. And I'm hoping that I can help you."

Matt steals a glance back at the plain wooden door. With the door closed he can't hear the whisper of the machines, doesn't know for sure that they're still doing their jobs. It makes his skin itch, and he has to force his eyes away; to focus his limited attention on the pretty nurse in the white stockings and sensible shoes. "Oh?"

She nods again. "I just want to tell you that it's never too late."

He's heard that before, from the other nurses who scurry into the room to change the bag at the end of John's catheter and poke at the buttons on the machines. Don't Give Up Hope is the number one mantra, followed in quick succession by It's Never Too Late and He's A Fighter. He supposes that's the "compassionate care" that all the propaganda trumpets, the nurses towing the party line, but it's gotten so that every time they open their mouths to parrot some ridiculous cliché he wants to smash their teeth in. 

"Yeah," he says. He knows his lips are pressed in a thin line and the single word has come out clipped and angry, but he's been gone too long. Anything could be happening in that room. The tiny _clink_ as the door shut sounded so permanent, so _final_. "If that's all—"

"It's never too late to tell him how you feel. Not as long as he draws breath," Amelia clarifies. Her hand grips his forearm as though she knows he's about to bolt. "Tell him you love him, Mr. Farrell."

Matt blinks down at her hand, pale skin and chipped pink polish against the olive green of his jacket. "I don't know what you're talking about," he breathes out, but the lie is simply instinctual, the same one he's told himself ever since John hurtled himself into traffic in the middle of a darkened tunnel just to save his pitiful life. Him, Matt Farrell, some sarcastic little twerp he barely knew who'd gotten into something way over his head. He might have been feeling some lust – okay, he was definitely feeling some lust – on the first leg of that Fourth of July road trip from hell, but when John threw him into the post and wrapped his arms around him, protected him, he knew it was love. Killing a car with a helicopter and then _joking_ about it just solidified the deal.

When the nurse squeezes his arm, he glances up. The automatic denial is on his lips again, but when he meets her pale blue eyes he finds it dying on his tongue. "How did you know?" he asks instead.

"Let's just say that I'm an astute observer," Amelia says. She releases his arm and smoothes a palm down her starched white uniform. "I've been at this a long time."

He might have stood there staring at her forever, but she gives him a gentle shove and he turns, curls his hand around the smooth metal door handle and pushes his way back into John's private room. The tableau is still the same – Holly flanked by her children – and the image almost makes him hesitate. Isn't that how he's always been told it should be? Husband, wife, two kids. All they need is a white picket fence and a dog. But Holly's the _ex_ wife and one of the kids wasn't talking to his old man three weeks ago and John's allergic to dogs, anyway. Fuck societal norms.

He drags the second chair to John's other side, sits and takes John's hand. It might be his imagination or it might be hearing the doctor talk and knowing that the next conversation will include words like "palliative care" and "hospice" and "getting his affairs in order", but John's hand feel cooler than it did yesterday. He wraps both his hands around John's limp fingers; watches John's chest rise and fall in time with the hiss and thump of the machines.

"So," he finally says. The single word cracks on its way past his throat, and he swallows and licks his lips before starting again. He can do this, and he'll face it head-on the same way John would.

"John," he begins again, and this time his voice is even. "You're a smart guy. I guess you know they're saying you don't have much time."

"Farrell," Jack warns.

He senses more than sees Lucy put an arm around her brother's chest and draw him back, probably preventing Jack from hauling off and punching him in the face. At the very least she saves him from getting banned from the room. He'll have to thank her later for that. Now all he can do is focus on John's face; eyes closed, three day stubble, halo of hair starting to grow in again on his scalp. John would hate that. When he's done here he's going to have to find the razor again and clean him up some.

Matt shakes his head. No distractions.

"They're telling us to start preparing for the worst, John," he forges on. "But doctors are _idiots_! These are the same guys that still routinely perform circumcision on newborns even though there is NO scientific evidence proving its benefit! And don't even get me started on thyroid stents and CT scans, the literature I could show you would-- Never mind. Point is, John, doctors are morons and you are made of fucking _titanium_ , all right? So stop fucking messing around and get better, because… because I love you, okay, and my life was _shit_ before you showed up and it'll go back to being shit when you're gone and I do not accept that. I do not accept that. So ignore the fucking doctors, get off your ass and embrace your inner badass or whatever the fuck it is you do and _wake up_!"

John's fingers are cold in his, and not even Holly's quiet weeping can drown out the sound of the machine's steady hiss and thump.

* * *

Matt isn't in the room when John wakes up two days later. He's down at the lounge, refilling his Styrofoam cup with decaf because he's already bouncing off the walls from sleep deprivation quite enough without any extra caffeine boost, and making small talk with Rosa as she runs a cloth over every surface that anyone would touch ever. But he hears the commotion from down the hall and knows, just _knows_ , and then his fingers spasm and his knees go weak and he's clutching the table that holds the coffee maker as if his life depends on it.

He stares dumbfounded at the splash of dark liquid pooling on the floor; jerks his head up when Rosa puts a warm hand on his arm. His head feels fuzzy and Rosa looks blurred at the edges, which is his first clue that he's actually crying. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, because his mouth is numb. _Everything_ is numb. One hand flutters toward the spilled coffee, though he really can't feel his limbs anymore either. "I can clean—"

"Oh honey," Rosa says. "You get on out of here and see that man."

* * *

"Five more steps and you can rest," Matt says.

"I can count, kid," John grunts out. "Twenty seven steps from the room to the bench. Same as it was yesterday. Same as it will be tomorrow. Unless the fuckin' docs relent and let me outta this shithole."

Matt wisely doesn't point out that John has at least one more surgery scheduled on his hip before he can safely move back into his house. Nor does he mention the sheen of sweat that coats John's body when he finally eases onto the wooden bench and sets his cane aside before stretching his leg out with a sigh. 

"Course it'd be the damn hip that gives me the most trouble," John continues to grouse as Matt slides in beside him. "Gonna be walkin' like an old man before I get my pardon outta here."

"You're not an old man," Matt says automatically. "And Jesus, McClane, it's not _prison_. Those doctors saved your life—"

"Even though they're idiots?" John interrupts. "And you got all the paperwork on scans and stents to prove it?"

He _does_ have the stats, reams of the stuff on his computer back home, and doctors _are_ halfwits a full eighty seven percent of the time, and _ohgod_ John heard every word he said. It takes a moment for his brain to catch up to this news, because it's been six weeks and three days and ten some odd hours since John woke up and McClane's never said word one… he's never eluded to… there was not even a _hint_ of—

"You were in a coma!" Matt blurts out.

"Don't ya got any stats about guys in comas? They hear all kinds of shit," John answers affably. He lifts a shoulder and leans back to rest his head against the wall, closes his eyes. "Heard Holly reading a bunch of _Louis L'Amour_ out loud. She brought in the book yesterday to finish, but I don't have the heart to tell her I don't read that shit anymore. Heard Kowalski givin' me a piece of her mind once. Mighta heard some low-level minion in my department declaring his undying love."

"I never said—" Matt starts, then stops himself. Because fine, he never technically _said_ "undying", but that's totally what it is. He's in this for the long haul, and when he dares a glance toward the other man he sees that John has cracked one eye open and is looking at him like that's really not a bad thing, and okay. _Okay_. 

"I'm not a minion," he says instead, joining John in leaning back and staring at the archival photos on the opposite wall, because if he keeps looking at John McClane he might go in for the big First Kiss and the doctors haven't cleared John for any strenuous activity yet. Not that macking on somebody like him would be all that taxing on John's heart, but one thing could lead to another and yeah, he's really got to stop this train of thought at the station.

"Whatever you say, Matthew," John says mildly.

Minion. Matt snorts. If it wasn't for him they wouldn't even have known where to find Tony Caspuccio last year, never mind been able to make the damn arrest. Hell, he deserves a medal just for being able to work his magic at all with the damn mainframe they've gotten running at the JTTF. He blinks, eyes flicking past the photos leisurely. Yeah, that fucking monstrosity he's dealing with at 1PP wouldn't look out of place in those photos from the dinosaur age…

Matt blinks again. John starts when he lurches up from the bench, so Matt throws him a smile over his shoulder that feels wan and sickly before he holds out a hand toward one particular photo on the wall, then bends to squint at the small print at the bottom of the frame.

_Returning Corporal William Waskowski served our country proudly. Now St. Jude's does the same for him. February 1942._

Matt's eyes dart back to the photo. The black and white print is grainy – a thin, lanky serviceman flanked by two smiling nurses, one looking down at the Corporal and holding a blood pressure cuff in her hand and the other grinning straight into the camera. Her light hair is held back by a ribbon instead of loose around her shoulders, and the fingers resting on the serviceman's sleeve are tipped with chipped nail polish. Matt would bet his life savings that the polish was pink.

"You okay there, kid?" John asks from behind him.

Matt stands up slowly, knees weak. Presses the fingers of one hand carefully against the glass on the old photo and meets eyes that he _knows_ are blue before he turns back to John, whose own sea-green eyes are narrowed.

"I'm okay," he croaks out. "I do love you, you know."

"Yeah," John answers distractedly. "You gonna puke?"

Matt chokes out a laugh. "Nah, I'm fine," he says, and discovers it's the truth. It's not like he didn't already know that there's a lot of mysterious shit in the world. This mystery gained him John McClane. Maybe that's all that matters. He turns his back resolutely on the row of old photos and straightens his spine. "You ready to head back?"

John eyes him suspiciously, but finally grunts and reaches for the cane while Matt does his best to hover close enough to grab him if he falls without looking obvious about it. He's pretty sure that John isn't fooled, and when the tip of the cane slides on the scuffed linoleum it's Matt who finds himself pressed against the wall, hands gripping John's biceps and heartbeat fluttering wildly and John's face inches from his own.

"Love you too," John says.

That first kiss maybe isn't enough to explode heart monitors, but it's still pretty damn amazing.

He holds John's hand on the way to the room, John's fingers warm and calloused against his. He never looks back.


End file.
